Is your website getting a failing grade in Search Engine Marketing? Are you brand-spanking new to marketing your website online and haven’t got a clue what the differences are between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?
A Review Of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) And Search Engine Optimizaton (SEO)
Take a deep breath and we’ll tackle this together.
What Is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?
SEM is a rather broad term to generalize all paid and non-paid efforts you make to increase the search engine rank, or, online visibility of your website in the search engine results pages (SERPs). So, things like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising and other forms of online advertising can be classified as SEM. The desired result of Search Engine Marketing is to drive higher-volumes of traffic to your website. Like all other forms of marketing, the more eyeballs seeing your products and services, the more people you can convert to sales.
What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimization is a more specific term used to describe the more technical aspects of optimizing your website’s code, structure, content and organization to: 1) closely match the keywords and content that search engine end-users would expect to use to find your site or similar websites, and, 2) optimize specific elements (referred to as signals) of your website that search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing use to rank websites.
I know… the above definition of Search Engine Optimization is a bit general. Let me break things down a bit further for you. The complex business of SEO can be rather simply explained as having two components, onsite and offsite optimization.
Onsite SEO
Onsite Search Engine Optimization refers to the use of appropriate search engine keywords in the code and content of your website to boost your ranking in search engine results pages. Onsite SEO tactics include known factors search engines use to determine the relevance of your website, such as: use of search engine keywords in page headlines, directories and file names; inclusion of META tags (Google uses these in rare situations, but other search engines still rely on them); internal linking of web pages and use of anchor text (the text in links used to describe what the link is about); page load times and a host of other techniques.
Offsite SEO
A subset of Search Engine Marketing and brother to onsite SEO, offsite Search Engine Optimization specifically refers to search engine optimization techniques that use third-party websites to improve the relevance and rank of your website for your chosen search engine keywords. Offsite SEO includes things like link building (getting other websites to link to your website), use of anchor text in third-party links pointing to your website, building authority in your site by getting links that are thematically relevant (if you are a Las Vegas web designer, links to your website hold more weight if they are from other Las Vegas businesses and other web design related sites), and a host of other techniques.
To get the most from your website, you need to work with a competent Las Vegas internet marketing firm to help you:
- Identify relevant search engine keywords to describe your site, company, products and services.
- Review keywords your competitors are using, assess online competition for your chosen keywords and find openings you can exploit in Search Engine Marketing.
- Execute onsite and offsite Search Engine Optimization.
Keep in mind, Search Engine Marketing needs to be viewed as an ongoing activity. To get your website ranked number one in Google takes time and a sustained effort to beat your competition.
We want to hear from you! Do you need help with marketing your website online? What did you think of the above primer on Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization? Leave us a comment, below!
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